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Opinion

As we all prepare our New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, spend less and reduce our stress level (again), remember to add these five simple resolutions. If you commit to these five things, you’ll be contributing to a safer 2010 for yourself, your loved ones and your community.

No. 1: Torture your kids by talking to them seriously about their safety

Another season, another scandal. This time, a minor car accident in Florida gave rise to a story that culminated in Tiger Woods issuing a public statement confessing to “transgressions.”

In what appears to be a semi-annual ritual, the press is having a field day with the foibles of another celebrity. Talk shows talk. Experts offer opinions. Eyebrows are raised. Heads move gravely from side to side.

In an effort to understand the Jefferson County Public Schools budget crisis, I believe I may have stumbled onto a solution. Most of the district-promoted suggestions for reducing the budget include relatively minor concessions by the district administration, partial to wholesale elimination of assistant principals and librarians, partial elimination of counselors, support staff, school secretaries, paraprofessionals, clinic aides, and of course, teachers.

With recent news of libraries closing, hours being cut and services being reduced around the Denver area and the nation, it’s important not to lose sight of the growing need for library services in the community.

All good things come to an end, and for me, the time has come to leave the Columbine Courier.

I came to South Jeffco in September 2007 knowing virtually nothing about the area, outside of having visited Chatfield Reservoir as a child and watching the Columbine High School tragedy unfold while I was a junior at Eaglecrest High School in Aurora. I came here from Sterling for the chance to work in the Denver area, and had no idea how much I’d grow to appreciate this place.

I’ve had my share of senior moments the last week, more of them unforgettable than forgetful.

No single piece of mail can more brutally deliver mortality’s sharp stick in the eye than the dreaded AARP membership packet, and my own little reminder of the five-decade milestone came when seniors and their concerns were uppermost on my mind.

When Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who directed the Manhattan Project, witnessed the first atomic explosion, he quoted a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” The military smiled, and the rest of us started worrying.

Emily’s List, an organization that was formed to support the election of pro-choice Democratic women, is named based upon what has become an increasingly true idiom of political campaigns. Emily stands for “Early money is like yeast.” Candidates’ ability to raise funds in the early stages of campaigns has something to do with how they will use that money in their campaigns, but has much more do to with how their campaigns are viewed by others.

The year 2010 is shaping up to be one of the most active primary seasons in recent Colorado history. In the U.S. Senate race, Democratic incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet (who was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter when Ken Salazar became secretary of the interior) faces a spirited challenge from within his own party from Andrew Romanoff, former speaker of the state House.

One of my dad’s favorite stories about me is when he took me to the Big Top to buy a kite when I was 5. We found everything we needed for 97 cents. I handed my dollar to the store clerk and waited for change. When I asked for it, he told me it was for the governor. I said I didn’t want to buy a governor. After my dad and the clerk explained that the governor was going to use my 3 cents for the road to get to the store and the school I would soon attend, I acquiesced and let him keep the change I had anticipated.

As in physics, politics has a handful of immutable laws. One of these is the Law of Overreaching, which states that the party in power will inevitably overreach.

Majority parties tend to act as though the entire population shares their core agenda. The problem with this, of course, is that for the most part no majority is possible without the support of a sizable number of voters who aren’t affiliated with either party.

After the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968, his brother Ted ended a moving eulogy by saying, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.”

In the spirit of Michigan, where I’m at: Should Flint tear down one-third of its city? There’s a June 6 article in Forbes magazine called “The Best and Worst Cities for Recession Recovery.” Colorado has one city on the “best” list, Boulder, because of its technology industry and the university creating stable jobs. At the top of the “worst” list is Flint, Mich., with “the longest road to recovery.”

When members of Congress left Washington to spend their August recess at home in their districts, pundits predicted they would be bombarded with constituent communication about President Obama’s health care reform proposal. Due partly to public interest in the issue and significantly more by sophisticated grassroots efforts by supporters and opponents of the initiative, the pundits have been right.